Across The Street
When we were ten, my best friend Courtney told me that the son of a family who lived across the street was a murderer. His name was Lucas. She never told me who it was he’d murdered, just that Lucas was one, a murderer. She used to dare me and our other friend Missy to run across the street, up the hill into his yard, to touch the porch’s WELCOME mat. The WELCOME mat was old; it was weathered, so much so you could barely make out the letters, the corners long gone. I don’t really think anyone lived there then, though Courtney told us his ghost did, forever forced to linger somewhere between the dead oak and his parents’ porch. "You can feel him here sometimes," she said, "carried along the wind." Whenever it got cold, Courtney would say, "you can feel him, can’t you?" Lucas had an icy touch.
It was late in the fall, probably early November I think, when Missy finally gained the courage or had tired of our chastising enough to touch the mat for herself. The first frost had set in the previous night, so all day we’d pretended to breathe out smoke, sometimes using small sticks as cigarettes. We tried to puff out rings, though it seems all we could make were whisps that trailed slowly from our mouths. At Courtney’s house acorns covered the ground, enough to crunch beneath each step, the type good for sling-shots. It was the year’s twilight, you know the time right before winter, before the trees have fully shed their leaves, revealing small areas of bare ground--naked patches that resonate with the mixed scent of cold and warmth. All around us hung a slight dampness, the decay of the surrounding woods past year’s foliage hanging somewhere in between the shades of grey, white, and brown--brown and weathered like Lucas’ WELCOME mat.
Courtney and I had already touched it ourselves a number of times, those worn corners. But this would be Missy’s first real chance. She’d always made excuses before. Sometimes she’d blame it on a knee or an ankle, explaining the problem in terms we didn’t understand. Her father was the field doctor for the Texas A&M football team, so she knew plenty about the different diseases and conditions, the names of ligaments, and stuff like that. But that afternoon, something changed.
She was always jealous of our friendship, of me and Courtney, I think. Looking back, it seems she might have thought this would make her our equal--touching Lucas. It was her idea.
"Hey guys, you think I can’t do it," Missy said.
"What are you talking about" I asked.
"Lucas. You don’t think I can touch him," Missy said. "You don’t think I can do it."
Then she turned, ran up the hill into his yard. Courtney and I sat there and watched. Missy had on her white Reebok pump-ups, scuffed and a bit worn; they were her favorites. Upon tagging the mat, she turned to run back, her left sole slipping on a patch of black ice. She fell forward, face hitting first. Split her chin wide open, an inch long gash, blood began flowing immediately onto the limestone steps. Quiet, then Missy crying, partially at the sight of her own blood, partially at being stranded for too long on Lucas’ porch, it was as if he’d reached out and tripped her himself. She screamed, and we stared on in awe